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Comment by gw | Hacker News Reader

Between this and the Salon SWAT story from earlier today, it's hard to not be completely ashamed at the depravity that Americans like myself are actively financing with our taxes. It's telling that the best data we have on these innocent deaths comes from a non-U.S. organization (Bureau of Investigative Journalism).

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I've always thought that one of the best way to address those issues would be to have a simple tax sheet to decide where your tax money goes - one of the best ways to vote with your money. Want to support drones programs ? Tick the box. If you don't, while you can't stop the program by yourself, at least you are not financing it.

People would probably underfund boring but necessary programs like the interstate highway system and industrial regulations, and would mostly check boxes for a few highly visible programs that fit with their politics (NASA, the EPA, new fighter jets, etc). I expect that a lot of programs would end up being designated as "necessary", with choices allowed for only a few which are deemed inessential. And of course, drones would end up being classified as necessary.

Implementation/execution is another story. I would call "necessary" everything that falls into everyday life needs (and that could be clearly defined and spelled out and agreed in the first place) - and it would be relatively easy to define "optional" -> warring outside of your own borders is probably hard to justify as ultimately necessary.

This would essentially be voluntary taxation, which I certainly support but is not something any legislature would ever willingly pass.

How to get there is certainly a problem in itself, but if more people start talking about it, eventually it will gain momentum. Note that I am not for a 100% voluntary taxation policy, I don't mind having a "predefined base" + optional taxation kind of system.

If it isn't voluntary, the money will eventually find its way there. It's a fungible commodity, and as Congress has often demonstrated, earmarking it for specific uses is notoriously subjective.

Well swapping funds around has limits - if you clearly spend the money planned for road improvements or welfare for other uses like war purposes, a simple audit of spending will be able to highlight the misuse - and I'd wage we would need an extremely severe judicial system to punish those involved with the misuse of public money.

Paying for things you want, and not paying for things you don't want?

It's called the "free market", and it is the antithesis of government.

Everyone has one vote.

The problem with dollars is that some people have more. Many, many more.

So while I agree in principle that we should close the gap between citizens and decision-making, I'm not confident the right way to do it is with currency.

This may happen regardless of tax policy. Many propose forcing it by slowly taking away the weight of the currency base by using alternate currencies: https://medium.com/@cyphunk/use-a-crypto-currency-end-a-war-...

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